General Inquirer

Rachel Campbell, Shawna Jackson, Lisa Tselebidis

General Inquirer: Basics Created by Philip Stone in the 1960s

Homepage: http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~inquirer/ Provides a word count Uses the Harvard IV-4 dictionary and Lasswell

dictionary content analysis categories A total of 182 dictionary categories

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~inquirer/homecat.htm Five categories based on social cognition work

of Semin and Fiedler User can also create customized dictionaries

General Inquirer: Basics Limited version can be found at:

http://www.webuse.umd.edu:9090/

Full version can be obtained through Dr. Neuendorf or found in the CATI lab for Cleveland State University students

General Inquirer: Harvard IV-4 categories - Examples Reflect Charles Osgood’s semantic differential

findings Basic language universals

Pstv – 1045 positive words Subset of 557 words are tagged Affil – indicates

affiliation or supportiveness

Ngtv – 1160 negative words Subset of 833 words are tagged Hostile – indicates

attitude or concern with hostility and aggressiveness

General Inquirer: Harvard IV-4 categories Strong – 1902 words implying strength

Subset of 689 words tagged Power – indicate concern with power, control, or authority

Weak – 755 words implying weakness Subset of 284 words tagged Submit – indicate

submission, dependence, vulnerability, withdrawal

Active – 2045 words implying active orientation

Passive – 911 words indicating passive orientation

General Inquirer: Lasswell value dictionaries Four deference domains: power, rectitude, respect,

affiliation Four welfare domains: wealth, well-being,

enlightenment, skill Example of Power:

PowGain = Power Gain, 65 words about power increasing

PowLoss = Power Loss, 109 words of power decreasing

PowEnds = Power Ends, 30 words about the goals of the power process

PowAren = Power Arenas, 53 referring to political places and environments (not nation-states)

General Inquirer: Purpose Purpose: Analyze content of three different

reports on the Republican primary debate from September 22, 2011

CNN (national)

Cleveland Plain Dealer (local)

San Jose Mercury News (local)

General Inquirer: Instructions Before we get started…

Input Convert all of your articles in to .txt files Place all .txt files in a folder called “testdir”, and save it

to the General Inquirer folder

Output Create a blank excel sheet titled Output.xls and save it

to the General Inquirer folder

General Inquirer: Instructions

Main screen

General Inquirer: Instructions - Input

Type “testdir” in the Input field if it not already there

General Inquirer: Instructions - Output

Click Browse and locate the output.xls file

Note: no changes are made to the Dictionary field.

General Inquirer: Instructions - Run

Once your Input and Output are set, click Run.

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results

Relocate the Output.xls file and click open

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results – Tags (example shows one case only)

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Tags

CNN

MercuryNews0

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Word Tags for GOP debate coverage

CNN

PD

MercuryNews

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Tags The news articles used mostly strong and

active words

Weak and submissive words were rarely used

Overall, results are what one would expect of a candidate in a debate

He or she will want to appear strong and capable with faith in his or her ideals

General Inquirer: Instructions – Word Count Use the same process as Tags, but make sure

the Words option is selected

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Word Count

General Inquirer: Instructions – Results - Word Count The most used words relevant to the debate were: candidate, debate, Florida, security, social, state, Perry, Romney

The most used words overall were: the, are, to, of, said…

A limitation of the word count is that you have to scan the results to eliminate unnecessary words